Aoife O’Donovan

Briar Rose

“I was reading a lot of Anne Sexton poetry, she’s a fabulous poet from Massachusetts who’s now deceased. She has a great collection called “Transformation” which are all poems based on Grimm’s Fairy Tales and her re-telling of Sleeping Beauty through the poem “Briar Rose” really inspired me and it’s so dark, so dismal and gruesome – Sleeping Beauty being the victim of some sort of abuse – and that’s what inspired the song. It’s sort of my “Briar Rose” is based on her re-telling of the Sleeping Beauty tale.”Aoife O'Donovan (16)

Pearls

“”Pearls” is a tune I wrote after a birthday gift I received from my mother. We’re descended on the maternal line from the Salem witches, directly descended from Rebecca Nurse actually, so my mom for my 29th birthday gave me my grandmother’s pearls and I just made up a story in my head about where the pearls came from. It’s a mystical fantasy about my grandmother’s necklace.”Aoife O'Donovan (16)

Red & White & Blue & Gold

“I wrote this song in the summer of 2011. Some friends and I had been at a bar on the 4th of July and there were no fireworks to be seen. A couple of days later I was thinking about my friend who had really wanted to see the fireworks and the sort of melancholy feeling we all get mourning for our childhood, missing the old days, being on the beach on the 4th of July and that brought out a story of forlorn love I guess.”Aoife O'Donovan (16)

Oh Mama

“I wrote this song when I was living in Boston. It’s inspired by the band and by Bonnie Raitt and by lots of my heroes. I think I had just come back from Sweden where I drank my first mug of mead and the opening line of that tune is, “When I was a barmaid, you were my mead.” It’s just a singalong bar room song, talks about bourbon, I was drinking a lot of bourbon in that era – my youth.”Aoife O'Donovan (16)